The Garden - Melissa Scott [35]
"No one else we've encountered has had anything close to our technology," Paris said. "Particularly the transporter."
"And yet there's an open door waiting for us," Janeway said. "Keep a fix on us, Chakotay. We're going on."
Kim took a careful breath. One of the few things Voyager had had going for it in the Delta Quadrant was its technological superiority; if the Kirse had a transporter, even a more primitive version, that would make them the most advanced civilization the ship had yet encountered. And that, he added silently, made them also the most potentially dangerous species as well.
"Do you smell something?" Renehan said, abruptly, and out of the corner of his eye Kim saw Paris nod.
"Yeah. Bread-fresh-baked bread."
Even as he spoke, Kim caught the same aroma, and beneath it the scent of garlic and onions, strengthening even as he identified them. He swallowed hard, tasting hunger, saw even Janeway quicken her step as they approached the door. He was suddenly, irrationally certain that food, human food or something that smelled very like it, waited in that room, and had to make an effort to keep from breaking into a trot.
They crowded through the doorway, into warm gold light and the complex scents of cooking, and this time it was Paris who swore out loud. A table stood in the center of the room, directly under a multi-armed chandelier like an antique candelabrum that gleamed in shades of silver. The tabletop was covered with platters, deep and shallow dishes that stood on footed holders over disks that glowed red-orange, even an enormous steaming tureen, and the uncovered plates were clearly piled high with food. Kim swallowed again, hard, almost sickened by the sheer quantity, the incredible opulence after the weeks of close rationing, and heard Renehan murmur something, either curse or prayer. He recognized some of the food as plants he had scanned on the way through the gardens-the peach-pear fruit, for one, a good dozen of the pale globes piled into a pyramid that was topped with a vivid red bell-shape that was probably a flower-but the rest smelled too appetizing not to be edible. And that, he told himself, trying to get a grip on his emotions, was a dangerous fallacy, but the temptation to reach out, take something, anything, from the groaning board was almost overwhelming. He reached for his tricorder instead, and trained it on the table. The results flashed back instantly everything on the table was indeed edible.
"Captain," he began, and to his horror heard his voice crack. In the same instant, Torres cleared her throat.
"What-are those hands?"
Kim looked quickly at her, and saw that she was staring at the table.
"There," she said, impatiently. "On the-big bowl-and on the rest."
Kim looked more closely. What he had taken for an elaborate filigree stand holding the tureen wasn't a
stand at all, but a pair of delicate, three-fingered shapes very like robotic hands. They clung to the sides of the tureen, two fingers curved beneath the base, the third steadying the rim, balancing it above a glowing disk that seemed to be a heating element. Another hand-shape, this one with spidery, multi-jointed fingers, held eight round shapes that looked like the sweet-bean cakes of his childhood between its thin fingers. Even as Kim watched, the "hand" swiveled on its wrist, rotating a different cake over a smaller glowing disk. Another hand, this one smaller, golden rather than the functional pewter-gray of the rest, uncoiled itself from the edge of a plate and took the cake, setting it delicately onto the empty plate.
"My god," Paris said, and sounded almost faint. "Harry, is all that edible?"
Kim nodded, made himself answer. "All of it," he said, and was remotely grateful that his voice didn't fail him.
"Then let's go," Paris said. "Captain, this is just sitting here waiting for us. Let's eat."
Kim nodded again, in spite of himself, in spite of the strangeness of